FICTION.
JAN AND HER JOB.* • READERS of Mrs. Harker's novels look forward to each new work from her pen with an assured and pleasurable expectancy which she has never yet failed to satisfy. Her books do not " give ono furiously to think," or " palpitate with actuality," or " discuss the elemental duel of sex with fearless frankness "—to quote some of the favourite phrases applied by enlightened reviewers to the new Balzacs and Rousseaus whom it is their function to discover every three months or so ; but, if they fall short of such formidable and perturbing achievements, they can always be relied on for the swift and wholesome passage of a few unclouded hours. They are not old-fashioned—Meg in the volume before us is quite a modern young woman—and they do not look at life through the rose-tinted glasses of the mid-Victorian romancers. But the amari aliquid is dispensed in moderate doses ; there is no wantoning in gratuitous gloom, no perverse desire to illustrate " the maintenance of wickedness and vice and the punishment of true religion and virtue "—as we have heard the aim of some writers somewhat profanely defined. They are wholesome, un- affected books, with plenty of people in them who are nice without being insipid. If we have a fault to find with Mrs. Harker in her new book, it is that she has eliminated one of the nicest characters —the father of the heroine—in a rather abrupt way. As the old Irishwoman said to an elderly benefactor who had given her alms : 'Tis a pity you should ever die," and Anthony Ross was only fifty-two when he was removed by influenza. However, we suppose it was necessary in order to give " Jan " (alias Janet Ross) greater scope for the display of her benevolence. We make her acquaintance on a voyage out to India, whore she joins a married sister at a crisis of her fortunes. Jan's brother-in-law—who from his name, Hugo Tancred, ought to be heroic—is a selfish spendthrift and gambler who, after muddling away all his wife's money, loses his post in the P.W.D. by grave financial irregularities, and crowns all by deserting his wife and children. The wife dies, and Jan brings the children home, mothers them, haunted by the prospect—ultimately fulfilled—of their father's interference, but carries her " job " to a satisfactory conclusion, thanks to the fortunate arrival in England of an admirable young Anglo-Indian who had already been a tower of strength to her in the trying days of her sister's illness and death. It only remains to be added that the dramatis personae include two very interesting children and a most engaging dog, and that the courageous and devoted heroine fully deserves all the good fortune which befalls her in the last chapter.
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